Ever accidentally move S1 from GPS to ATTI or worse to MANUAL while flying and not realize it? I've had it happen a couple of times when flying in winter when wearing a heavy coat. The cuff catches on the S1, clicks it to ATTI and you don't notice it, except that your P2V is suddenly doing strange things.
This can turn very bad, as happened to me the other day. My business does lighting retrofits (conversions from Halide to LED for example). A few nights ago we set up some test lights at the new car lot for a customer which is a new car dealership. I thought it would be good to record the brightness and light distribution for each set of test lights using my P2V as we turned them on individually to observe how well they lit the cars. Just before dark as we prepared the lights and mounted them up the light poles it turned cold and we had a thunderstorm, so I put on a coat. First flight went fine. Sometime early into the second flight things began to fall off the rails. P2V seemed to have a mind of its own. So, it is now semi-out of control above several hundred new cars. Then it decides it wants to land. No chance to check settings and switches and such, just sheer desperation on the sticks to keep it from landing on, or crashing into one or more new cars. After a few minutes of low level struggles (it was flying between rows of cars at one point) I managed to get it up and over a row and do a light crash landing (scratched up a couple of props). I put the P2V back in the box and continued the lighting test without it.
On the way home I was trying to figure out what went wrong. It was my first time fling in an airport restricted zone, so I thought perhaps that was the problem. BTW, you get new and previously unseen light patterns on the P2Vs LEDs when flying in a restricted zone. And the "You have reached maximum altitude" notification appears on your screen and as I recall it won't go away even as you lower altitude. Anyway, when I checked the P2V next morning the S1 was at Manual. It must have caught the cuff of my coat. Now I know why it is not recommended to fly manual. Especially at night over top of a few million dollars worth of new cars.
To resolve this problem I have ordered a couple of flip up switch covers, see below.
I don't quite know how I'll affix them to the Tx, but they were only a few dollars so I'll experiment. Hopefully it will eliminate the problem of accidental flipping of the S1 and S2 toggle switches.
This can turn very bad, as happened to me the other day. My business does lighting retrofits (conversions from Halide to LED for example). A few nights ago we set up some test lights at the new car lot for a customer which is a new car dealership. I thought it would be good to record the brightness and light distribution for each set of test lights using my P2V as we turned them on individually to observe how well they lit the cars. Just before dark as we prepared the lights and mounted them up the light poles it turned cold and we had a thunderstorm, so I put on a coat. First flight went fine. Sometime early into the second flight things began to fall off the rails. P2V seemed to have a mind of its own. So, it is now semi-out of control above several hundred new cars. Then it decides it wants to land. No chance to check settings and switches and such, just sheer desperation on the sticks to keep it from landing on, or crashing into one or more new cars. After a few minutes of low level struggles (it was flying between rows of cars at one point) I managed to get it up and over a row and do a light crash landing (scratched up a couple of props). I put the P2V back in the box and continued the lighting test without it.
On the way home I was trying to figure out what went wrong. It was my first time fling in an airport restricted zone, so I thought perhaps that was the problem. BTW, you get new and previously unseen light patterns on the P2Vs LEDs when flying in a restricted zone. And the "You have reached maximum altitude" notification appears on your screen and as I recall it won't go away even as you lower altitude. Anyway, when I checked the P2V next morning the S1 was at Manual. It must have caught the cuff of my coat. Now I know why it is not recommended to fly manual. Especially at night over top of a few million dollars worth of new cars.
To resolve this problem I have ordered a couple of flip up switch covers, see below.
I don't quite know how I'll affix them to the Tx, but they were only a few dollars so I'll experiment. Hopefully it will eliminate the problem of accidental flipping of the S1 and S2 toggle switches.
